


Keep Digging

by kentucka



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, From Damsel to Badass, rescue romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:41:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7631152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kentucka/pseuds/kentucka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen goes after the truth that so many people try to bury. Her life has become a series of conspiracy theories followed by meticulous research often endangering her own life, followed by exposés which get her a reputation.</p>
<p>So here are five times she gets too close and has to be saved... and one time she doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five

**Author's Note:**

> Written based on [this daredevilkink prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/7552.html?thread=14131072):  
> "So, now that Karen's a journalist it's about time she gets kidnapped by the villain of the week and saved by a hero, right? The valiant hero in question could be the Punisher, Daredevil, or maybe a less angsty option, like one (or more) of the Avengers. A romance between the hero and Karen is encouraged, but optional."  
> including the comment:  
> "Oh god, for some reason I really want someone to do this as a 5+1 thing and have one of the heroes be Black Widow"  
>   
> I hope I did them justice.  
> 

**Maria**

 

Karen runs her fingers over the textured paper and its embossed golden lettering, promoting the auction house. Just a little too over the top in her opinion, but maybe the cliché appeals to the buyers. It screams exclusivity and arrogance.

 

She shows up an hour early, as is good form. Prospective buyers are expected to browse the catalog, inspect the wares up close, before they sit in cushioned chairs with faux-bored faces. It’s a poker game: the more interested they are in a piece, the less interested they want to appear. Ambling between the display cases, she pretends to weight her options.

 

Except not thirty seconds in, bile threatens to rise in her throat. The “items” on sale are mutant powers, in whichever form they can be harnessed. There are quite a few eyes arranged in tasteful boxes, next to severed hands, tongues. A lock of hair hangs almost innocently in between various body parts. Despite steeling herself, it’s hard to keep her composure in face of such cruelty.

Karen stops and focuses on her breathing, wishing she had a shot of tequila to settle her stomach. She – her conscience – cannot afford to be caught. Her article will come too late for these poor people, but she will be damned if she can’t save someone from the same fate.

 

At the back of the show room are the powers of the mind, which cannot simply be cut out or off. Not for lack of trying, Karen is sure. The pods’ glass is frosted, obscuring the occupants’ faces so that only vague shapes and colors are left to match to the description in the brochure. She counts a dozen cryogenic freezers, half of them holding children who barely reach her hip.

 

Vindictively, she imagines putting a bullet into every single person with an auction house uniform. Instead she gets that tequila from the bar, several actually, uncaring of the stares she gets.

 

When the proceedings start, she takes a seat and watches people bidding on each lot, each power, each _body part_ that once belonged to a _human being_. The frozen ones come last, and with each knock of the hammer her rage morphs further into despair. These people are to be enslaved, psychologically broken, programmed, and used for their powers. She knows what will happen to them, and is utterly helpless to stop it.

 

“Lot number twenty-six. Sixteen-year-old Kevin here is a firestarter...”

 

The auctioneer’s prattling is suddenly no more than a dull roar in Karen’s ears. She barely notices as her hand rises; all she can do is stare into the frosted window and see her brother. The gavel bangs once, twice, three times, then everybody looks at her. Karen blinks. A heartbeat later, the next item is on the block.

 

Karen sits, the realization of what she just did sinking into her limbs like lead: She bought someone.

 

She bought someone, but it won’t help that boy at all. Because she does not have the kind of money to actually pay for him. There are a lot more zeroes on her bank account since she started at the New York Bulletin, but definitely not five of them squeezed between a three and a decimal point.

 

Best case, the black marketers only kill her for interfering. But if they think the boy’s somehow connected to her, and too risky to sell… she forfeited both their lives.

 

The second the hammer falls on the last item, a woman with the ability to erase memories, Karen is approached by one of the auction house clerks.

 

“Good evening, ma’am. Shall we complete the transaction?”

 

Karen gets up, smooths her hands over crinkles in her dress, wobbling a little in stilettos she’s not used to wearing anymore.

 

“Certainly.” She clears her throat, and fumbles her clutch purse open.

 

The clerk taps on a tablet. “Will that be credit card, or a wire transfer?”

 

“Wire…?” Trying to stall is all she can think of, and filling out a form with banking information must take longer than swiping a card whose limit is roughly a hundredth of the asked sum.

 

“In this case, we will require you to remain on the property until the transfer has been confirmed, ma’am. If the account is offshore, please bear in mind that this may take a few hours. I apologize for the inconvenience but I hope you understand that we have to be cautious.”

 

Putting on the bravest face she can muster, Karen nods agreeably. “Of course, this is a risky business.” Then she continues to dig through her tiny purse as if it contained anything at all, muttering to herself about finding the account information, and praying to the heavens for a miracle, a diversion, a chance to get the hell out.

 

A touch to her shoulder makes her jump.

“There you are! Almost lost you in the crowd.”

 

The clerk makes no outward sign if he thinks the comment strange, what with there never having been enough attendees to make a crowd in the first place.

 

A woman has appeared next to Karen, tall, brunette, dressed to the nines as the rest of the guests. She hands her glass of bubbling champagne to Karen with an air of authority - boss to underling - and effectively stops Karen’s search for a piece of paper that doesn’t exist.

 

“I’m sorry, we’ll be paying with this after all.” And then, like a magic trick, she twists her wrist and a credit card appears between her fingers.

 

Karen doesn’t really know anything about credit cards, but there’s a roman soldier type picture on it, and based on the way the clerk’s eyes go round as saucers, it must be one even the wealthy rarely get to see. With a dopey little grin he swipes it, and barely glances at the tablet to confirm its approval before he hands it back… reluctantly.

 

The strange woman thanks him, takes possession of the purchase receipt, and walks out.

Only when she yells “Come on!” over her shoulder does Karen manage to unlock her knees and follow.

 

Karen catches up in a side alley, where her rescuer oversees a cryo pod-sized crate being loaded into a van. “Who are you?” she whispers.

 

The lady looks her over, head to toe, before she replies, “I hope you got what you came for,” and shakes Karen’s hand. Then she climbs into the stretch limo waiting in front of the van.

 

As they drive off, Karen checks the paper sticking to her sweaty palm. It’s another business card but much simpler, black font spelling out “Maria Hill” on top of a light gray Avengers’ logo.

 

* * *

 

 

**Trish**

 

“HIV, cancer, Alzheimer's - humankind still has no definite answer for some of the most cruel illnesses, causing gradual but inexorable destruction of the body and mind. For the thousands of afflicted, and thousands more who see their loved ones suffer, it is unimaginable that anyone would keep promising drugs off the market out of sheer greed.”

 

Karen rewrote the opening paragraph nine times already. She wants it to pack a punch, throwing out accusations she backs up with evidence later in the piece, appeal to the readers’ empathy for those who are sick, and clearly lay out the guilt of those who profit by stealing others’ life expectancy.

 

One of Foggy’s pro bono clients was part of a drug trial and hopeful that if he continued treatment, he might be able to lead a better life with fewer side effects, only to learn that despite its exemplary results, VirTuous was refused by the FDA. She already transcribed her interviews with the doctors leading the research study, and patients who had taken the experimental drug. The puzzle piece she’s missing is the one man who swept the results under the rug, and sold details to a rival medical company which he gets kickbacks from.

 

And she’ll get that tonight.

 

Karen checks the clock, and spends the remaining hours until the meeting with planning a little thank-you party for Foggy. Just her and him and anyone else he wishes to invite, who helps bring the corrupt FDA approver behind bars.

 

*

 

The underground parking lot is one of the worst-lit in New York. Every other neon lamp is out; the ones which still glow are covered in dirt. It gives Karen chills just looking out of her car. She is five minutes early, and leaves the headlights on.

 

A couple of cars come and go, but nothing happens in the appointed corner. She will have to get out and look around at some point.

 

Deep breaths to calm herself, mace spray in hand, and she opens the door. It is times like these that she hates driving an old car: there is no remote; she has to fiddle the key in the lock on the door, which puts her back to the room.

 

Karen is getting used to the adrenaline by now; her hands are mostly steady. Nothing happens, and she scans the garage level as far as she can see. She checks other parked cars in the immediate surroundings, but they’re all empty. No scared sources hiding and debating whether to really go through with it.

 

She starts walking, tennis shoes silent on the asphalt.

 

She can tell her mistake just as she rounds a pillar, a shift in its half-shadow cast by a murky lamp on the right. Pain stabs through her side like a knitting needle, then spreads out in bubbling heat all over her skin. She collapses, barely catching herself enough to not break her nose on the floor. Every muscle twitches uncontrollably.

 

It moves up through her body in a wave of prickly heat, her ribcage not expanding for long, long seconds in which she fears to suffocate, but then it travels into her arms and neck instead, and she digs her nails into the asphalt.

 

A few seconds more, and she starts to shake it off. She’s left sticky with cold sweat, muscles trembling from the overexertion. Whatever she was injected with, it doesn’t last long. Come to think of it, she expected kicks and hits that never landed. Karen rolls onto her back, only to see two figures dressed in black fighting it out like a scene from a Jackie Chan movie.

 

She has no idea which one attacked her, so she rob-crawls away, hides in one of the many shadowy corners until her legs work enough to carry her back to her car.

 

There’s a loud crash as one ninja is bodily thrown through a windshield. Stays down.

 

The other one pulls off their ski mask, revealing a long, blond mane of hair. “Hey, Karen, wait!” she yells, and jogs over with a disarming smile.

 

Karen stands frozen next to the open door of her car. Her fight-or-flight instinct must be broken, because she should be inside her car, revving the engine, pulling away with squealing tires, and if necessary run that blond ninja-lady over to escape.

 

Said ninja pulls off her right glove before extending her hand. “Trish Walker. Sorry if that was a bit stalkerish. Jessica asked me to keep tabs on you while she’s off hunting down some other bad guy.”

 

Karen’s brain re-boots. “Jessica… Jones?”

 

“That’s the one. Sourly alcoholic and phenomenal PI.”

 

Finally, Karen takes Trish’s hand. “Uh. Thanks for the save.”

 

It shouldn’t be possible, but Trish’s smile becomes even wider and softer. “Don’t mention it. Just one journalist helping another out.” At Karen’s quirked eyebrow, Trish adds, “I’m a radio show host.”

 

A poster she saw on a metro bus flashes through Karen’s mind. “Right, _Trish Talk_! Sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”

 

Trish holds up the mask. “Kind of the point.”

 

*

 

A week later, the source finally has come forward, the article is published, and the FDA approver in custody. The party is in full swing with half of Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz well on their way to public indecency lawsuits, when Karen sidles up to Foggy and punches him in the arm none-too-gently.

 

“Ow! What was that for?”

 

“You had your boss put surveillance on me!”

 

Foggy looks suitably chastised. “Sorry. There were so many corporate bigwigs involved, with too much money… I was afraid they’d send an assassin after you – which they did!”

 

Karen shakes her head, which sends the room spinning just a little. She may have over-indulged a bit, too. “That’s not why I’m mad. You should have told me. Ahead of time.”

 

He nods and stares into space with a frown; Karen recognizes the expression as him internalizing what is being said.

 

She pats his cheek, causing him to refocus. “You wanted to tell me, but you knew I’d be fighting it. So you avoided the argument and simply took the decision away from me. That’s why you feel guilty.”

 

Foggy’s eyebrows rise.

 

“Don’t say anything, just don’t do it again. And I promise that I’ll listen, next time you ask me to get a bodyguard.”

 

He smiles and pulls her into a hug. The warmth from the alcohol merges with the warmth of his body, and suddenly she feels better than she can remember feeling since Union Allied.

 

* * *

 

 

**Clint**

 

“Am I paranoid?”

 

Ellison laughs in her face, but it’s not malicious. It’s genuine amusement at a great joke Karen just told without meaning to. “You tell me,” he replies instead, “page three article if you’re not.”

 

Karen starts typing.

 

*

 

The jewelry store owner points an accusatory finger at her. “I’m not talking to you.”

 

Makes her wonder if she should be using aliases. Investigative journalists, the good ones who really uncover conspiracies to prove their paranoia, tend to make a name for themselves through the by-line. Witnesses and suspects turn shy.

 

“Sir, I would just like to hear your account of what happened in the Brooklyn branch.” And how you were involved, she doesn’t say. No matter where the Banshee robber hit, in a weird row of five coincidences, the owners were at their stores. Insurance claims filed in under an hour. You’d think their first order of business would be to calm down their salespeople, promise them security upgrades and free therapy sessions, rather than taking inventory.

 

“You need to leave, now.” The store owner is not accommodating, but Karen drove all the way out to Staten Island to meet the guy in person, and she won’t be easily gotten rid of without so much as a first-hand witness account.

 

Behind her, a bell tinkles as the door opens and closes. In front of her, the owner goes ash-white.

 

Karen clamps NoiseBusters over her head.

 

There’s a sound, high pitched and uncomfortable in a way that feels like squeezing brain cells on a molecular level. Everybody else around her is so affected, they drop like sacks of potatoes.

 

Slowly, Karen turns, and sure enough, there’s the guy the witnesses described. Late twenties, plaid shirt and jeans, full beard, shaggy hair, thick-rimmed glasses. She almost laughs at how the save-the-world hipster image clashes with the illegal pursuit of worldly riches.

 

He stares.

 

She frowns back at him. She’s developing a serious migraine, rivalling the morning after a most excessive night at Josie’s, when she always forgets to drink her water.

 

He switches tactics. Or frequency. Karen only has a second to catch the Banshee-guy’s neck muscles straining, then the pain between her ears intensifies to the point where she doesn’t even feel the floor underneath her knees, the hair between her fingers as she clutches her head.

 

Just as suddenly, it stops.

 

There is blood dripping onto the floor and the NoiseBusters, which she must have pushed off. Karen looks at her hands; they too are smeared red. She is bleeding from her ears and nose. Her throat is dry and rough as if she screamed, but she didn’t hear herself.

 

She still doesn’t. Her heart hammers in her chest, but it is dead quiet.

 

Shoes appear in front of her before she can panic. Military combat boots.

The man crouches until they’re eye-level, taps her chin to tilt her head back like a reminder that this is how you deal with nosebleeds. Karen recognizes the square face and spiky hair, even without the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.

 

Hawkeye mouths words at her, slow and precise: You will be fine.

 

She relaxes, nods. While he gets up and does something in the room, she looks for her purse. There are tissues which she balls up and stuffs into her nose, wipes her hands and ears.

 

Looking over the room, the hipster-Banshee is on the floor, an arrow sparking blue electricity still hooked into his shoulder blade. Hawkeye cuffed him, and put a muzzle over his mouth.

 

He returns and tugs her towards the front door, but she resists. She came here to do a job, and it’s the perfect opportunity to find proof. She points at the door labeled “Office” instead. He follows.

 

It doesn’t take more than a minute to find it: the insurance claim form filled out already, listing every single collier, brooch, and stone which was supposed to go missing. Grinning widely, she punches the air. “Yes!” she yells, overly loud because she registers it only as a low rumble. “Thank you!”

 

Hawkeye flicks on the hearing aids she never noticed. “You’re welcome.”

 

*

 

The article appears on page three, but it does get a one-line teaser on the front page.

Karen sticks with her real name.

 

* * *

 

 

**Rhodey**

 

 

Disgusted with herself, Karen snaps the file folder closed. It’s been two weeks since various banks started putting up alerts about devalued cash currency – old bills which had their serial numbers registered and were sent for destruction – circulating, and she still hasn’t managed to come up with a lead which doesn’t fizzle away into nothingness. Each time she asks for information so she might trace a particular bank note, she is stonewalled by bureaucrats for “security reasons”.

 

She pours herself a finger of whiskey and looks down at the files spread all over her apartment floor. She tracked the serial numbers of each resurfaced bill to the bank they were originally collected at, but they came from eight different branches of five different banks. It is unlikely that a bank employee used unfit currency as their personal savings account.

 

The transports from the bank branches to the Federal Reserve never reported issues or irregularities, so they were either very good at covering their tracks, or the theft happened later, at the Federal Reserve or the East Rutherford Operations Center.

 

Lots of frustration and half a bottle of whiskey later, Karen decides: If she can’t follow the money on paper, she will do so in person.

 

*

 

It is pure luck, she figures, whether she is following the right armored truck. There may be decoys like in the movies. But so far it goes in the right direction, even if not on the shortest route.

 

They’re entering a large park. Karen checks her phone; GPS is updating, but the map underneath it remains disorientingly empty. No bars.

 

The roads are deserted, which means she’d be easily spotted as a tail, so she decides to hang back further. Not being able to call for help is even more reason to stay out of sight.

 

The armored truck continues for another five minutes, and stops in front of a bridge. Men climb out of the underbrush. They don’t bother with the back door; the truck driver hands them a sack, receives one in return. Ten seconds, and they’re underway again.

 

Karen filmed the exchange happening in broad daylight, and turns her car around. She cannot pass by the men at the bridge; she has to go back the way she came.

 

She’s in the middle of reversing, with the car sideways on the street, when pain explodes in her left thigh. “Fuck!” she yells in surprised agony. She is shot!

 

There’s a man and his gun by the bridge far down the road – he probably aimed for her head. Two more shots, one pings off the car’s A column, cracking the windshield, and the other smashes the backseat window. The sound of the discharges reaches her somewhat delayed.

 

“Fuck!” she screams again, decidedly more anger in it, and hangs herself bodily on the steering wheel to turn the tires in the opposite direction. As soon as it hits the lock, she presses her right foot down on the gas. The front tires kick up dust and slip. The car jumps forward, but the park road is too narrow. The left front tire goes over the shoulder into the ditch, hangs free. The right one has traction for another second and the forward momentum swings the car back towards the left, and then both front wheels spin in the air.

 

“Shit,” Karen curses, throws herself down across the passenger seat, making herself a smaller target. “Shit shit shit,” she continues as bullets start hitting the car again, zipping through the already broken window. The man is getting closer, his aim better.

 

She pulls the handle of the passenger-side door to open it. Her purse on the seat cushion digs into her ribs, and Karen gratefully pulls out her registered pistol. Gun in hand, she wriggles forward until she drops to the ground. The car’s undercarriage rests on the edge of the ditch, but the back tires still lift the car enough to give her a wedge to look through, to point her gun at the shooter’s knees, and pull the trigger.

 

He screams, and she screams at the noise.

 

Something loud, something deafeningly loud starts firing. Large caliber automatic. Pebble sprays where the bullets impact in a straight line across the street, between her and the robber. It’s a clear warning to stop the nonsense, like a parent going between their petty fighting kids.

 

From the blue sky, War Machine descends. “Perfect, asshole. You just added aggravated assault and attempted murder to your charges. Put down your weapon; you’re under arrest.”

Without taking his eyes off the man who throws his gun and a couple of knives away, War Machine adds in her direction, “Don’t worry ma’am, an ambulance is two minutes out.”

 

*

 

She writes the article from the hospital bed, featuring an exclusive and very illuminating interview with Col. Rhodes, about how the intelligence community supported the Federal Reserve to bust the crime ring.

 

* * *

 

 

**Natasha**

 

Karen sighs. The SkinTec CEO sighs.

 

“I really wished this was over by now. I need to cancel my manicure. Dylan!” Sarah, the CEO, clicks her fingers.

 

Dylan ends the call he was on, and slips the phone into one of the pockets built into the sides of his motorized wheelchair. “Just did, ma’am.”

 

Sarah smiles at him. “You’re the best PA I’ve had this month.”

 

He beams back at her, and Karen gags. She needs to get out of here before this dissolves into D/s workplace sex. Not that she judges, but Sarah doesn’t exactly scream _safe, sane, and consensual_. More like _unhealthy, mad, and power-imbalanced_. Karen wants no part in that.

 

With her hands bound behind her by thin but durable household cord, she calculates herself some pretty good chances, actually. She fiddles with her watch, tries to get at the tiny blade of a dismantled Swiss army knife which she has duct-taped to the underside. It’s the only reason she has started wearing a watch again.

 

Once that is out, she twists it between her fingers until it catches against some of the cord. With small movements, Karen starts sawing.

 

Sarah stops eyefucking Dylan long enough to throw another question at Karen. “Have they figured out the overheating issue yet? How do they manage to get the performance people are so used to on their cell phones and wearables, without ice packs over the skin?”

 

That calls for a bullshit answer, just to have a little fun. “They’ve found a way to trick the wearer’s body into cooling the implanted chip for them.”

 

Sarah’s eyes narrow at her, obviously torn between calling Karen on it, and wondering if that is biologically possible. She’s a CEO with zero medical or technical background, so all she has is her imagination.

 

The cord snaps, and Karen doesn’t wait for it to fall to the floor. She jumps up and rushes Sarah, simply runs her over. Dylan squeaks. In his panic to retreat, he opens the door that Karen would have needed a passcode for, and rolls backward as Karen advances.

 

He thumps into something, almost topples over, and when he sees that he tripped over their security people’s unconscious bodies, he squeaks again.

 

Down the hall, a redhead in black leather catches some reinforcements by surprise, attacking them as they come in from the stairwell. It’s five against one, but when that one is Black Widow, it’s hardly a fair fight no matter how many you send.

 

Karen pulls Dylan’s laptop out of its bag, while he cowers in fear. She wags a finger in his face. “You really are a great PA. Go find yourself a less crazy employer. Like an NGO.” Once Dylan nodded, clearly too terrified to do anything but agree with whatever she says, Karen hands the laptop over to the superspy. “Whatever you find on it, be it about SkinTec being HYDRA-funded or plain old corporate espionage, I want an exclusive.”

 

Natasha laughs, and calls the elevator. “Clint told me you’re trouble.”

 

“In hindsight, I should have published under a pseudonym,” Karen replies. “Although trouble did tend to find me even before I became a reporter.”

 

The elevator car releases two more security men, one of whom Karen knees in the groin while Black Widow does her leg-chokehold-sideways-flip signature move.

 

“Show-off,” Karen grumbles, a little bit jealous. Natasha only laughs, and in that moment Karen realizes this may be the perfect – only – opportunity. Looking up through her lashes, she asks: “Actually… Could you teach me that?”

 

Natasha considers her for a moment, then points to the laptop. “Let’s get this to Maria. She has all the Stark tech necessary to break any encryption on it. The facility also has the coolest gym,” she adds with a wink.

 

Karen giggles, and is just a little bit star-struck at the idea of actually going to the Avengers Facility.


	2. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "research" I have done for this chapter probably got me on the watchlist of half of the alphabet soup agencies. :D
> 
> If anyone's interested, I envisioned the type of gun Karen's handling to be a Heckler-Koch MP7, a so-called Personal Defense Weapon. (Disclaimer: I have never actually held or fired such a weapon.)
> 
> Also I would like to apologize for the creative license I took with Fire Island Pines, and for going with the small town cops cliché. Call it my plot device, because our two lovable idiots think they're smart, but there's no way they should've been able to get away with any of this.

It’s been going well for months. A streak of white-collar offenders to report about meant that for a while, Karen could enjoy her life without expecting an ambush at every other corner.

 

Sure, she still looked over her shoulder. Or more precisely, up to the roofs. Matt was still out there, and so was Frank, both keeping busy if only half the offenses ascribed to them were true. She could never tell if she hoped they were still watching over her, out of sentimentality, or if she hoped they finally left her alone so she could forget all about their vigilante madness.

 

In the meantime, Karen’s life normalized. During the days and long evenings, she worked at the Bulletin, following leads and writing articles. Occasionally, she would exchange information with Maria Hill, or get the crazier expenses funded by Stark. On the weekends, she took self defense classes that came recommended by Trish, and went to the gun range. With Foggy and a gang of friendly lawyers and paralegals from Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz, she hopped bars until the early mornings. She folded her laundry and dusted her bookshelves. It was mundane, and glorious. She enjoyed it while she could, because it was only a matter of time until…

 

Frank Castle appears in the middle of her living room one Thursday morning.

 

She flinches back violently enough that she spills her coffee. “Jesus Christ, Castle!” she hisses, mostly exasperated by the dramatic entry, sneaking up on her while she’s in the kitchen with her back turned. She throws a couple of paper towels on the tiles to soak up the brown puddle, and refills her cup.

 

Then she pours another, and presses it into Frank’s hand as she passes him on her way to the couch. Her legs are weak in a weird mix of too little sleep and jitters from the adrenaline rush.

 

“What can I do for you, Mr. War on Drugs?”

 

He has the decency to look sheepish. Delaying his answer, he sniffs at the coffee and sips. His face smooths out in something like bliss.

 

Karen grins to herself. She’s buying the good stuff now.

 

“I could use your help,” he mumbles across the rim of the mug.

 

Anger spikes through her. “With research, like when you went after Schoonover?” She’s not looking for a repeat performance. “Do you remember my exact words?”

 

Head lowered, he stares at the ground between them. Even while he stands there in all-black gear and muscle-y, and she’s lounging on the couch in her pyjamas, she feels like she has all the power in the room.

 

Frank nods. “I’m dead to you.” She can hear in his voice that he takes this as his answer. She knows he’ll turn to go before he shifts. He sets the mug on the kitchen counter and adds, “I’m sorry that I dragged you back into it. After Ryker’s.”

 

It’s not the apology she’d like to hear; he doesn’t regret killing the Blacksmith.

 

It’s been a long time, though, since that night in the woods. Karen had time to self-reflect, too. The moment they met, she knew that he was a murderer. Hell, before that, even. Running from his shotgun at the hospital, she was terrified of him. But somewhere along the way, somehow she assumed that she had him under control. She understood the warped code of honor he operated under, which made him more predictable. Maybe because he protected her so many times, because they worked together to find Schoonover, it started to feel like he might listen to her.

 

At the tool shed, she had to face reality, and it scared the living daylights out of her.

Really though, he never lied. He never broke her trust. The only thing he shattered was her overestimation of her own importance.

 

She’d like to pride herself on learning from her mistakes, so she forces the residual anger aside. He shows up unannounced at her apartment, yet doesn’t even ask her to hear him out? Shouldn’t he at least try to change her mind?

 

But that’s the thing she learned about him: He is not deferent or submissive; he just doesn’t argue. He accepts her decision even if he doesn’t share the views they are born from, respects her choice not to be tangled up in his life anymore. She really has the power: to say no again, to send him away, just like she walked away from the tool shed. It is a heady feeling, to know that he will not bully or guilt her into helping.

 

No, she manages that on her own. Karen is not an asshole. He’s asking for her assistance, and even if she’s not sure he deserves it, the victims of whatever crime he’s trying to stop sure do.

“Frank, wait.”

 

His hand stills on the doorknob, and he politely turns to face her.

 

“I won’t ever agree with your method; I can’t say I’m happy about it. But I’ve made my peace with the fact that I won’t turn you in, either, which means I’m at least partially responsible for every death you’ve caused since you broke out of prison.”

 

Frank grimaces, but he doesn’t contradict her.

 

Karen sighs, and pats the couch next to her until he sits. Addict that he is, he grabs the coffee en route.

“I guess I may as well make sure that you use your freedom to save some lives for a change. What is important enough that you’d come here, despite how melodramatically I burned that bridge?”

 

One corner of his lip twitches at the self-deprecating remark, but then his face darkens. “Human trafficking. Same people behind it who also supplied that mutant power auction you wrote about.”

 

Karen sits up straighter. “Were you hoping that I still had an in with the dealers? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure they figured out who I was after the article. All they needed to do is run a Google image search on my name.”

 

Frank shakes his head gravely. “‘Can’t go anywhere anymore. Now you know how I feel.”

 

She laughs, and pokes him in the arm. She missed his dark, dry humor.

 

*

 

It takes a week of checking records at various administrative buildings, and some more creative tactics, but of course she finds them. _Of course_ being Frank’s words; he puts much more faith in her skills than Karen has. She’s still a newbie at her job, and feels the experience gap between herself and all her colleagues who actually studied this shit. She is awed by anecdotes about Ben, amazed when she looks through his research for some of the framed articles in his-- her office. She read the end product, and seeing the ingredients, Karen can tell where Ben spotted inconsistencies, what he deduced from each piece of information. He was also an avid user of post-it notes.

 

(“You’re good at this.”

“It’s all common sense, nothing special. You could’ve done it.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t have risked your life again by coming here. At least admit you’re tenacious.”

“I just want to know the truth.”)

 

So there is the auction house, which is actually a quite reputable, well-secured place. Not the kind a simple employee could use to set up an illegal, high risk/high profit scheme. Its CEO is a random lawyer who signs his name for cash, its owner is of course a letterbox company, and all the money is funneled through numbered accounts. But Karen is thorough.

 

Frank’s contribution is to carry around stacks of paper, and complain about half the wood of Sterling Forest occupying the apartment.

 

In response, Karen hands him a highlighter and points at one of the stacks. “Those are the shipping manifests I, erm, convinced their delivery company to send. Mark anything that is not coming from one of these warehouses.” She jots down five addresses from memory on a legal pad.

 

He folds himself down onto the floor and picks up the first page. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

Starting with the date of the auction Karen attended, he finds several items delivered from various addresses other than the auction house’s own storage, all within an hour from each other. A pattern soon emerges: every other month there’s such a wave of arrivals, and it stands to reason they all were powers.

Karen diligently checks every single one of those sender addresses, turning up more fake names and shell companies, until finally, during the fourteenth auction, somebody got sloppy.

 

Karen flops down on her back, pillowed by the strewn-about printouts on the floor. Frank appears at her shoulder; a tumbler of whisky dangles from his fingers, and she stretches her arm up gratefully. Unfortunately, she can’t quite reach, and he won’t bend. She makes an unhappy sound in the back of her throat, but Frank is unimpressed.

 

“Come on, you have to be vertical to drink it anyways.”

 

So she sighs deeply, but figuring it turns the whisky into a double reward, she sits back up.

“My head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.”

 

Frank clinks his beer bottle against her glass. “Either way, a lot of fiber’s going around.”

 

She chuckles, savors her celebratory liquor, and keeps digging into the lead.

She thinks she fell asleep on the floor, but she wakes up in her bed.

 

*

 

They try their best to appear inconspicuous. Frank’s in jeans and a light gray henley – Karen banned black clothing to minimize the risk of him being recognized – with a baseball cap and concealer over the remaining bruises. Everyone assumes that the Punisher is a loner, so Karen hopes pretending to be a couple escaping the bustle of New York to Fire Island Pines for a quick vacation will stop people from looking at them too closely.

 

But the plan may just backfire because the ferry is carrying exactly three other people, who all showed their commutation fare tickets. It is still too early in the year for the tourist season. Too cold. Karen shivers.

 

Frank must notice too, because he hugs her from behind, pulls the sides of his leather jacket around her shoulders. “Visiting family?” he asks in a low voice, so the other passengers won’t overhear.

 

“Weird to then stay at a rental and not know everyone since childhood. Anniversary?” she offers in return.

 

“Don’t think we’ll be able to pull off the old married stereotype.” To prove his point, he breathes the words against her neck, and squeezes her gently when she tenses.

 

She huffs, annoyed at herself. They just spent a week cooped up in an apartment together. That’s the longest she has shared her living space with someone since she left Vermont, unable to deal with roommates. With Frank, she never felt like her privacy had been intruded, she wasn’t afraid or intimidated by him.

 

Nevertheless, this new level of intimacy feels unnatural. Karen cannot relax while doubt still nags at her: Every instinct tells her to trust him, but what if she’s just slipping back into the delusion that her opinion on justice served has any influence on his actions?

 

He is a stone-cold killer even while he bodily shields her from a hail of bullets, and while he drinks her coffee with an appreciative little moan, and no matter how innocent he may look when he falls asleep watching her work. She stands in the embrace of a man who has taken lives not out of self-defence, like she did, but for revenge.

 

She may want to be a better actor for the sake of the article, but it’s only healthy that she’s creeped out. She cannot keep him in check. At best, she might steer him a little through advice or arguments.

 

However, if there is one thing she is certain of, it is that she is in absolutely no danger from him directly. Taking a deep breath, she rests her head against his shoulder and enjoys his body heat at her back.

“Our first vacation alone, then. A dry-run for moving in together. It’s perfect because there are no distractions when we’re surrounded by only a handful of people in the entire town. Lots of romantic walks between empty beachfront houses and sticking our heads together to talk about God knows what.”

 

Frank hums in agreement, and presses his lips to her temple.

She feels a lot warmer all of a sudden.

 

*

 

Their rented cottage faces the beach in the south of Fire Island Pines, and they reach it easily after a 10-minute trip along the narrow boardwalk. In early spring, it is still a ghost town. Karen figures it will take her some getting used to, this surreal sense of living in an almost-abandoned city, like she stepped into a zombie apocalypse movie.

 

When they see the house, Karen triple-checks the address.

 

Frank raises an eyebrow. “I never asked. Who’s bankrolling us?”

 

Karen only shrugs. “The Avengers?” At Frank’s incredulous look, she adds, “Remember that I met Maria at that auction? They’re trying to weed out these assholes too. So when I explained that I’m after the suppliers, she offered to rent something low-key.”

 

She hadn’t told Maria about working with the Punisher, though. Karen wasn’t sure whose side of the fence the Avengers were on, and didn’t want to risk exposing him, or risk losing their financial support and with it, their chance of catching the head of the operation. Because, naturally, said boss resides in one of the most expensive areas around New York.

 

Frank laughs, deep in his belly so his shoulders shake. “Low-key,” he repeats, and walks up to the front door.

 

Staring at the luxurious deck extending onto the beach, Karen adds faintly: “It’s a one-bedroom.”

 

*

 

Unpacking looks like this: Frank spreads weapons all over the kitchen table, disassembles, cleans, and puts them back together. He brought his favorite scope and sniper rifle, one of the smaller automatic firearms he took from the cartel, and two handguns. Karen brought her own, legally owned.

 

Karen, meanwhile, sits on the queen bed and covers it in photos, newspaper clippings, and printouts with highlighted text on them. There is the warehouse where it all started to unravel. The shell company it’s owned by, its CEO, who’s a cigar club member and best buddies with another douchey type who’s known to lobby for mutant control laws. The cigar club itself is wholly owned by a different corporation and five more levels of incorporated diversified subsidiaries of international conglomerates, or whatnot. But one name in there is familiar – the same as the owner of the warehouse.

 

The lobbyist reappears as “executive broker for acquisitions” on several of the shell companies and all that… this web of connections between high-profile personnel with ties into government tells Karen that they’re on the right track.

 

It all leads to the most prominent name she can associate with the company structure: the head of the board of directors at a holding called Next Level, a woman named Benyu Benson.

 

Who lives in Fire Island Pines.

 

Karen uses sticky tape to arrange her research on the wardrobe doors. She adds the only picture of Ms Benson she could find - a headshot used in an investor’s pamphlet from four years ago.

 

Frank joins her in the bedroom. “I made sandwiches. We can eat while we tour the city, scope out her house,” he says as he points at Benson’s picture. “Black woman in a board of directors, wearing cornrows four years ago. Very ahead of her time. They must be terrified of her.”

 

“Could have been a role model to many girls,” Karen agrees. “If she weren’t selling mutant slaves.”

 

*

 

Their little stroll the length of the town takes no more than an hour. The slow amble gives them plenty of time to check out Benson’s house as they pass it. It sits in the middle of a plot of land, a gravel path leading to its front door, and like most houses, a wooden deck in the back faces the beach. There are no guards, but Frank spots security cameras pointed at the entrance, and although the property isn’t gated, there is still the possibility that motion detectors or a fancy-ass laser grid are hiding behind the hip-high fence.

 

Arms linked, they take to the boardwalk again. Somehow, the whole day turned out… anticlimactic.

 

“What’s next?” Karen wonders. They have seen the house, and now they need to get to Benson somehow. Confront her, make her implicate herself. At least, that’s what Karen would need for her story.

 

“She thinks she’s safe, complacent. I’ll go out again later, see which surrounding houses are lived in, which are empty. See if there’s a good angle to watch them. Learn their routine.”

 

It’s a start, but it sounds very boring, and cold. Her research usually takes place in a heated apartment, or at the office. She has meetings with sources outside, sure. But never stakeouts. She’s not the police, nor a private investigator. She’s not sure she has the patience to just lie in wait, do nothing but stare at a door or window for hours, waiting for movement.

“Alright. Just make sure you come back and we show ourselves to the population every now and then. Keep the cover intact.” And let me know you’re still alive, Karen adds mentally.

 

Frank stops and faces her, wipes a breadcrumb from her chin. Embarrassed, Karen ducks her head, and that’s when she notices another woman coming up from behind, riding a bike with a bag of groceries dangling from the handlebar. They’re being eyed curiously, but the woman only nods politely as she cycles past them.

 

Frank’s hand is still on her cheek when Karen shifts her attention back to him. His expression is soft, and doesn’t change at all once they resume walking.

 

That night, she lies awake in bed, while Frank breaks and enters a few empty vacation homes. She lies awake, marvelling at the ease with which he keeps a respectful distance between them, even as they portray a couple who’s madly in love.

 

*

 

He returns the next morning, bringing coffee and donuts from the bakery, saying he used the breakfast run as an excuse in case anyone saw him out on his own at the crack of dawn. Just a good fiancé spoiling the love of his life.

 

They wrap themselves up in fleece blankets, and eat on the deck.

 

Frank gives his report. “It’s pretty standard for these parts. No cellar, mostly wooden, huge deck facing the beach. Second floor has all the bedrooms, but there was a light on all night.”

 

“Security?”

 

“Yeah. A couple of bodyguards bunking in the extra bedrooms. I saw two more women moving; she probably lives there with her girlfriend? Wife? … Sister?”

 

“Think they’re both in on it?”

 

Frank levels a look at her, which Karen chooses to decipher as ‘how would I be able to tell looking through a periscope’ rather than ‘who cares I’m gonna shoot them both in the face’. Because Frank’s not indiscriminate about who he kills. He will make sure they both have skeletons in their closets before he pulls the trigger.

 

Unless she can convince him to hand them over to the authorities.

 

Yeah, she’s not kidding herself; the probability is… very low.

 

“Okay, okay. But you did find a good vantage point?”

 

A jogger runs by, slow in the sand. He’s checking out Frank, Karen can tell and grins to herself. The three awkwardly wave at each other, torn between city anonymity and small-town cordiality.

 

Once he’s out of earshot, Frank continues. “The bungalow on the left is empty. Sign says it’s being tended to by some real estate agency during the winter. No plants to water inside, no snow to clear anymore. Don’t think they’ll be back until they air it out for the first vacationers. It has a window facing Benson’s living room.”

 

Karen nods, taking it all in. “Did you see any plaques, for the security system?”

 

Frank grins, eyes crinkling. “You trying to hack it?”

 

Karen chuckles ruefully. That’s not in her skillset. “Just… trying to help any way I can. I’ll see if I can dig something up in public records about their hired muscle.”

 

The grin on Frank’s face becomes even bigger. “Hired muscle? Who talks like that?”

Karen splutters, but he talks right over her, doing a horrible impression of her. “‘Hired muscle.’ Who have you been hanging out with? Red? I bet it’s Red? I can imagine him saying shit like that when he’s not all lawyerish euphemisms, like ‘freelance security consultants’.”

 

Remembering how Matt talked about such men in a courtroom versus in their office, Karen snickers because Frank hit the nail on the head. She did probably get this from Matt - or Foggy.

 

But Frank doesn’t stop there. “Or those Avengers? Yeah, they’re all ‘let’s teach those goons a lesson!’ Shit, like a cops-and-robbers comic.”

 

That makes Karen laugh so hard her breathing hiccups, a World War Two-era Captain America cartoon she once saw stuck in her head, pointing with jerky motions and leading his army buddies to knock some Nazi heads together.

 

“You got me,” she wheezes. “I watch too many action movies.”

 

“You’re damn right you do.” He takes a sip of his coffee, briefly scrunches up his nose. Then he gets up, and with a completely straight face, adds “I’m gonna saw some wood now.”

 

It cracks her up again, especially when she can actually hear faint snoring from the bedroom.

 

*

 

Finding Next Level was like the thread that held the webbing of company thicket together. Finally she can pull it, and watch it all unravel.

 

Over four or five corners they own a tax advisor, who, she bets, also does Next Level’s accounting. So she first calls their company directory, pretending to be a salesperson offering a wide variety of office productivity tools, mainly accounting. Accounting is not in today? No worries, she'll call back. What name and extension? Oh but what about Records, is that in the same department? No?

 

Thus armed with information, she guesses a random extension. Is this Records? So sorry, could they transfer her? And when the phone is picked up again, she dons her best panic voice: “Hey, Diane here, please I need your help, I just shredded a really-- what? Oh, sorry, I’m Mr. Park’s secretary, from Accounting? Yes, we’re on a business trip, and I just realized… oh God I’m mortified, this never happens to me, I always double-check! Why didn’t I-- I shredded a really important invoice that needs approval today, I thought it was from last month! And the VPN’s not working at this hotel. We should make a note of that and never book the-- Right, the invoice. Some security company for Next Level? It’s actually a regular payment. Could you-- no, company email isn’t working either, like the VPN, something in the firewall settings or whatever. God I just need Mr. Parks to have a look at it and wave it through as usual. I’m so stupid. This is all so unnecessary, if I’d only taken a second look at it-- Yes, God, yes that would be perfect. My private email works just fine. It’s diane dot…”

 

Fifteen minutes later, an email pops up in the account she created earlier. _Not a hacker_ , Karen thinks, _but a decent social engineer_.

 

Sitting cross-legged on the couch, laptop balanced on her knees, she stares at the copy of the invoice. Safe&Sound Private Security Services bills a flat fee for a two-head 24/7 coverage, with additional five counts of heavy weaponry surcharge, and a body armor rental fee.

 

Karen sucks in a breath. So they’re dealing with five bodyguards on rotation. And they probably have a better arsenal than what Frank managed to smuggle on the ferry in his dufflebag.

 

She researches Safe&Sound until the bedsprings squeak, and a sleep-mussed Frank rounds the corner. It’s been only four hours; she guesses he caught a few hours of sleep while everything was quiet at the house, too.

 

“Coffee?” she asks, and points him at the waiting pot.

When he has had his kick, she turns the laptop to face him.

 

*

 

Frank goes back to “sit on the house” after lunch despite her warnings. It keeps her on edge, and all Karen can think to do is research more, go over everything again, hit up Jessica for information, question Maria for anything she can remember from those auctions.

 

The phone chimes suddenly, making her jump.

 

_Definitely girlfriends._

 

Karen giggles, giddy with relief because she felt stupid asking if contacting him on their burners was okay, assuming it would be too much of a distraction.

 

 _Maria’s old ex-SHIELD contacts think the auctions started three years ago_ , she replies. _Really took off last year, after the Nature Max pills recall._

 

 _Didn’t realize there’s a connection_ , he texts back. _Huh, kinda makes sense now._

 

It’s quiet again for a while, until: _She’s been on the phone for half an hour now, pacing. Agitated._

 

Karen’s blood runs cold. Benson is the president of a huge corporation; that kind of job comes with gastritis and heart-attacks even if everything is above board. They need to see if it’s just regular work stress, waging the everlasting corporate war against the competition, or if they’re jumpy about the criminal side-business.

 

She has an idea. _I just ordered pizza for them._

 

The prank call is a bit weird in a ghost-town like the ‘Pines; Karen is sure she sounds nothing like Benson or her girlfriend. What if they have Coeliac disease and can’t even eat pizza? What if they personally know the delivery guy? There are a hundred other little things that can make her plan fall through.

 

Twenty-eight minutes later, a reply comes through. _Good thinking. Guard opened, frisked the poor guy, but all SOP. Not on high alert._

 

Karen sinks back into the seat cushion, and sighs.

 

It’s the last she hears of Frank Castle.

 

*

 

Karen cooks dinner, watches some television to unwind, and finally naps on the couch.

 

It’s going on 11pm when she wakes back up, forcing herself up to take a shower and go to bed. She checks the phone, but there is no further communication from Frank. It unsettles her a little, so she shoots a quick, _all quiet?_

 

Another half-hour passes, and she’s toweling her hair dry while checking for a reply. There is none.

 

“Shit,” she says to herself, feeling the panic rise. The cell has service, and she can’t think of a reason why he wouldn’t answer. “Fuck, Frank.”

 

Should she go and check on him? Or trust him to know what he’s doing, and stay? If nothing’s wrong, her walking past the Benson house could give it all away. But what if something did go wrong? Then every minute might count.

 

She calls the burner. With every ring it goes unanswered, she imagines him scrambling up from his sniper hideout, hiding the gloom of the cell. She wills him to pick up, pick up. He wouldn’t ignore her; he would pick up the call, because he’d assume something had happened on her end. But it just rings, a seventh, an eighth time. After the tenth dial tone, she hangs up again.

 

“Shit, what do I do?” Karen asks herself. She looks around the room.

 

Frank’s automatic is still on the kitchen table. She picks it up, her fingers finding the safety, bolt catch release, and the magazine release button. She could probably fire it. One of the grocery bags is large enough to carry it in, with some spare ammunition.

 

It is not a conscious decision, but Karen starts to move. In a supply closet, she finds a working flashlight. She puts that into the grocery bag as well. It being night is a blessing and a curse: she can hide the gun easily, she can sneak into the house Frank used to spy on Benson, but it also means she will look even more suspicious if anyone sees her out and about. Frank may have his methods of just… materializing wherever he wants to go, mostly by way of rooftops. It’s not her style, though, and Karen imagines that detached family homes wouldn’t offer a good route anyhow.

 

She takes the burner phone, and leaves.

 

Street lamps between their rented beach house and Benson’s are still on, so she makes the trip in just ten minutes. Her heart is racing as she reaches the right walkway, but she can’t tell if it’s from running or fear.

 

From there she sticks to the shadows, inches closer while keeping an eye on the windows that are still alight. Benson’s living room of course, but also the bungalow on the right; its window is flickering in blues and whites from a TV screen.

 

Her goal is the bungalow on the left, which Frank had scoped out. She creeps along the side, until she finds the door in the fence which is unlocked. Pressing against the outside of the house, she notices that the back door is slightly ajar, latch taped down, so she slips inside.

 

“Frank!” she hisses into the silence. There is no other movement, no breathing besides hers.

 

The light from the street is barely enough to see by, but Karen is afraid that the flashlight would alert Benson’s thugs to her presence. Carefully, she tiptoes through the rooms.

 

She recognizes one bedroom view immediately as the vantage point Frank must have chosen, but unfortunately, the scene she finds kills the last piece of hope that he just fell asleep on watch. There are muesli bar wrappers on the floor, next to a spilled bottle of water that’s ruining the hardwood. Which is also scratched, now that she looks closely enough. There’s a dent in the bed frame from something hard and spiky. A fine blood spray.

 

Karen allows herself a minute to freak the fuck out.

 

*

 

She collapses, sits crosslegged on the floor. Fingernails dig into her palms, knuckles into her eyes, but it doesn’t stop the tears from rolling. For long seconds she is too tense to breathe, while a litany of “shit shit shit shit” runs through her head in a loop. When air does wheeze into her lungs, it feels as though her throat is too tight.

 

There’s a moment in which Karen realizes that she’s panicking. It is not a productive reaction, and in all the previous instances where she’d suddenly feared for her life, she managed to stay rational. But now? Somehow it’s worse.

 

Her brain switches to “Frank, fuck, what do I do?” and her breath hiccups to a stop again.

 

Clasping her knees, Karen curls up and rides it out.

 

She’s not sure how long it takes, but the panic ebbs away. There’s plenty desperation left.

 

Her trousers are soaked in spilled water, her shirt in tears. She wipes at her eyes roughly, scoots into a corner, and mentally yells at herself to _think logically_.

 

Is Frank dead?

 

There’s no body, not in this house. No big pool of blood either. Besides, they couldn’t have shot him; there are neighbors who would have called whatever police the ‘Pines have. But there are other ways… quiet and bloodless kills, like strangling. Slow, though. Frank would have put up a fight. Maybe the blood on the bed frame is not his?

 

They won, though. If Frank had gotten away, he’d have found her by now.

 

If they killed him, they carried his corpse away, and— Karen suddenly realizes that they will be back, to clean up the evidence of the fight. But the fact that they aren’t already might actually be a sign that they’re busy with an alive-and-kicking Frank Castle chained up in their living room.

 

Peeking out the window, barely raising her nose above the sill, she sees light still on behind closed blinds.

 

At last, Karen calms down. It’s a strange sense of professional confidence she doesn’t get often, ten percent experience and ninety percent anger at those who dare take advantage, enough to drown out the fear of whichever danger she puts herself in. Just like when they went up against Reyes despite the threats to their firm, or when she stared a mass murderer, who had hunted her through a hospital, in the eye to get answers about what happened at the carousel. Getting to the truth: She has done this many times; she can do it again. She will find out what happened to Frank.

 

*

 

Somehow she needs to get inside the house, Karen figures, if she wants to confirm that Frank is in there.

 

She has to assume that if these people knew about, or noticed Frank, they also know about her having arrived on the island with him. The direct approach will likely give her away. There are simply not enough strangers around on the island yet, to become anonymous.

 

Sneaking in, physically, should be easy, since the fence doesn’t do more than keep a pomeranian from wandering into their garden. But what if it is trip-wired with motion detectors, like Frank suspected? Can she test that? Is there something she could throw in, which might trigger any alarms, but appear harmless to the guards?

 

Pebbles are probably too small. A larger rock would definitely be visible on the manicured lawn, and raise eyebrows how it got there. Tree branches can break off but usually not without a significant storm. Kids could kick a ball or throw a frisbee in — if the neighboring house has kids she might be able to bribe them. But she doesn’t know if there are children, she doesn’t want to wait until the next day either… and most importantly, she doesn’t want to drag kids into the middle of this.

 

Karen looks around the vacation rental, digs through wardrobes and shelves for inspiration. And then she sees it: a beach ball. It’s deflated and folded away in a corner of the hall closet, possibly forgotten by previous renters and never discovered by the cleaners.

 

She puffs air into it, closes a couple of small holes with scotch tape from a kitchen drawer, pumps it up again. These things can be carried by a breeze for a while, so maybe it will seem reasonable to the guards that it got blown into their garden in the middle of the night.

 

Using the flashlight, she rounds the block and approaches Benson’s house from the beach. The lived-in bungalow next door has a shed in the back yard, which she uses to stay out of sight. She drops off the automatic there, then walks back onto the dirt road alley and underhand-serves the beach ball towards the front of the garden. Luckily, the breeze immediately catches it, and it dances in the front yard.

 

Karen ducks back behind the shed and picks up the gun. It doesn’t take more than a couple of seconds until more lights switch on inside the house. Someone parts the blinds just enough to peer through, and the front door opens. The silhouette of a person steps up to the beach ball while slowly pirouetting, rifle cocked, covering their surroundings.

 

A heart-beat, then the guard calls out with a female voice: “Just a beach ball.”

 

The blinds click back into place. The guard in the front yard turns her back to pick up the beach ball. Karen dashes out of her hiding spot and behind the house, swings her legs over the fence, and runs up to the deck. She ducks below it, keeps going until she has to drop to her knees, and finally rob on her stomach, pushing the gun ahead of her, through an opening in the brick foundation, into the crawl space underneath the house.

 

Once there, Karen has to admit to herself that she has no idea what to do next.

 

*

 

She lies still for a long while, listens to the guard carelessly dumping the beach ball over the fence and moving back into the house. The door closes, and she can hear the footsteps of several people. Some are distinctly heavier than others — the guards’ versus their charges’.

 

Once Karen’s breathing and heartbeat have quieted down from the sprint, she can even make out voices. They all come from one room in a corner, so she crawls over.

 

“Thank God that we caught him. That’s the freaking Punisher, Frank Castle. Big news about a year ago.”

 

“I know. I had people look into whether he was superpowered. Turns out he may have survived that bullet to the head, but other than being a sociopath, he’s not special.”

 

“Impressive body count though. Can’t say he doesn’t get shit done.”

 

There’s a pause, and the floorboards creak as people move around. The way the man and woman are talking, Karen is certain that first off, _Frank is still alive_. She rests her forehead against the cold sand for a moment, and just enjoys the relief; she’s not too late.

 

Secondly though, they talk about him as if he’s unconscious. That would throw a serious kink into any plan she might have had, because she cannot carry him. Before she can try anything, she needs Frank awake and at least participating in the getaway.

 

She has to wait. Which is just as well, since she still doesn’t really have any idea what to do.

 

“If you want my advice, ma’am, we should kill him. Get rid of him. I heard stories about the Irish after they captured him—”

 

“No. I need to find out who led him here. He must get his information from somewhere.”

 

“But ma’am—”

 

“I said no. Someone talked, or messed up. There’s a hole in the organization, and I need it patched up before anyone else catches on.”

 

“Yes ma’am.”

 

The guard exits, and the woman, presumably Benson herself, drags a chair over and sits down. Karen imagines her staring at Frank, while his head hangs chin against chest.

 

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Benson sing-songs, followed by a loud slap.

 

In that second, Karen truly hates her. She didn’t know before whether Benson simply cared most about money and employed others to do her dirty work, but with that blow to an unconscious person’s face she outed herself as a truly horrible person, someone to be despised. Karen considers aiming the gun up and just firing blindly through the floorboards.

 

A moment later, she hears a low groan. It’s the sweetest sound she heard in ages.

 

*

 

Benson interrogates Frank for a couple of hours (in which Karen resolutely ignores the fact that she’s starting to fucking freeze), but he scarcely replies. Mostly he snorts, or harrumphs, like her questions are hilariously stupid, or that he doesn’t think her deserving of the answer.

 

If the Black Widow has taught Karen anything, though, it is to pay attention to the questions. Who is Castle’s inside man? The question seems odd, now that Karen thinks about it. Of course Benson knows that he must be getting his information about her whereabouts, about her very existence, from somewhere. But that can’t be all. It doesn’t imply automatically that there’s a mole in Benson’s organization.

 

Sure enough, half an hour later she lets another tidbit slide. It is the single week in the entire year, where only the minimum two guards are present at her house. Benson just cannot believe it is coincidence that the Punisher shows up the moment her defense is at its weakest.

 

 _Whole lot of good it did us_ , Karen thinks.

 

She crawls further, listening for the security detail. They’re sitting in the kitchen, based on the sound of the espresso machine. The man is telling the female guard the horror stories about Frank and the Irish. It’s gruesome, but Karen only wishes that this were another instance where Frank had gotten himself kidnapped on purpose.

 

This leaves the girlfriend upstairs, potentially innocent, possibly asleep.

 

Karen moves to go back to Frank, slow and careful in the pitch black of the crawl space. As she turns, she notices a faint rectangle glow from above on the far left. Suddenly her heart beats as fast as her jogging playlist. It’s a trap door! She crawls right underneath it, and then focuses hard to listen to the sounds from above. It seems to her that the door is in another room, maybe the pantry, or some other storage space.

 

For a ludicrous second, she wishes Matt and his super-special hearing were there to tell her if it’s safe.

 

She takes the gun in her left. Softly, she pushes the trap door up with her right, and helps balance it with the tip of the barrell. There is light in the room from an open doorway, through which she can see the kitchen, but the guards are around the corner.

 

Sacrificing security for speed, she drops the gun in the sand, and instead lifts the trap door fully, noiselessly. In seconds, she crawled through, pulled up her hardware, and has closed the trapdoor as if it were never opened. One more pause in which she steels herself to do whatever necessary, to firmly grip the weapon with both hands, to check that the safety is set to four-bullet bursts. Then she moves.

 

The guards are exactly where she expected them, bent over their coffees at the kitchen table.

“Hands up,” she says, hushed.

 

“What?” The man looks utterly surprised.

The woman has drawn her sidearm in the same breath.

 

Karen pulls the trigger.

The quick tat-tat-tat-tat noise is so hellish loud it startles Karen, much louder than any gun she ever tried at the shooting range, but it is of no consequence. The table has exploded into hundreds of splinters, which both guards try to shield their eyes from.

“Drop it!” she yells, and the guards obey.

 

She backs them into a corner, makes them undress to their underwear, and cuff each other with zipties they conveniently carried in their pockets. Then they lead the way into the living room.

 

Benson is shielding herself with Frank’s body.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she demands, ever the evil empire queen who will not grovel even with a gun in her face.

 

Karen puts her back against the corner next to the door. She waves the guards into another, where she can keep an eye on them, while she talks to Benson.

“Very simple. Let him go.”

 

Benson hesitates. Her eyes flicker to the guards, to the door as if she might try and run.

 

“Don’t think I have forgotten about you!” Karen says loudly, because no way was Benson considering making a break for it. Her girlfriend must be standing in the hall. “Your lover is a very bad woman who has caused much suffering. I don’t know how involved you are, where your loyalties lie, so I’ll give you a choice. You can leave now, forget this happened, and find yourself someone nicer. If you are a bad girl yourself, I’m sure our paths will cross again. Or…”

 

A shadow moves, and Karen has punched the butt of the weapon into the woman’s face before she fully crosses the threshold. Benson howls and steps forward, but the gun pointed at her girlfriend stops her in her track.

 

“Or, you can stand by your woman. Quite literally,” Karen finishes. “Benson, please be so kind and untie Frank.”

 

She hasn’t looked at him so far, too focused on all their enemies, but when Benson actually goes and does as she’s told, Karen chances a glimpse. His eyes are wide open, probably keyed up by the intrusion, but she cannot read the emotion in them.

 

Her hostages— here’s a situation she never imagined she’d be in— haven’t moved a muscle. The guards have little pieces of wooden shrapnel sticking out of their arms, and bleeding cuts on their faces, but are otherwise unharmed. The girlfriend, in her pyjamas and flattened afro bedhair, shoots death glares at Karen.

 

A chair skitters across the floor, and then Frank is up, putting himself behind Karen. His right arm reaches around her, hand covering her fingers wrapped around the gun’s handle.

“You should go,” he growls, right into her ear.

 

It tickles, and she turns her head away, hating in the next second how it could be misconstrued as averting her eyes from what’s about to happen (the Punisher, Frank’s mission, who Frank is now). But this is not the place to explain. She relinquishes the gun to him, slips sideways away from his weird embrace.

 

She walks out the back, over the deck and along the beach. Two properties over, she hears the shots. Pop. Pop. Screams. Pop. Pop. Silence.

A muted light comes on in the neighboring house. 30 seconds later a siren yowls in the far distance.

 

Karen takes off her shoes and walks on the waterline, lets the icy ebb and flow wash away her footprints. To get rid of any evidence, she climbs into somebody’s garden, and buries her shoes and clothes in their garbage. She wonders if she left hair there, and if the police will figure out her access through the crawl space, because of the sand she dragged up around the trap door.

 

At their rental, she showers first, washes her hair, cleans the bathtub afterwards. Then she takes down all the research she meticulously put up on the wardrobe only two days ago. She packs up Frank’s gear, washes his dishes. By the time the police knocks for their canvassing, she has removed any trace of him from the house.

 

*

 

The officers are both in uniform, one in his late forties, the other going on sixty, and obviously neither are used to dealing with murder, let alone quadruple vigilante homicide. Karen plays up the stereotypical New Yorker I’ve-seen-it-all attitude (“I’m so sorry, officers, but I must have slept through it. I’m too used to weird noises at all hours.”), paired with surprise that’s equal parts scared and impressed (“You mean _the_ Punisher?”), and banks on the fact that her name probably doesn’t pop up in the system. She was only a secretary at the law firm who represented Frank at the trial, not named partner, and just because she wrote a compassionate article about him doesn’t mean anyone remembers the _author’s_ name. (She’s starting to use a nom de plume _right now_.) She may even have been a witness to some of his crimes, but a minute into the questioning she knows that the police only did a skin-deep background check of her record.

 

Quickly, she relaxes knowing that they will not make the connection. They refuse the coffee she offers and are off again. It amazes Karen that she got away with it, but she also knows not to test her luck. She packs and boards the next ferry to the mainland.

 

The boat is crowded this time, faces full of shock and betrayal that this would happen in their quiet village.

 

*

 

Her apartment is still a mess. She didn’t bother to get rid of all the research, and feels in no condition to deal with it now either. Instead she toes off her shoes and falls face-first onto her bed.

 

She lied to the police today. Not _failed to mention_ , no _half-truth_. Not simply keeping a secret when thankfully nobody asked her about it. She outright lied.

 

And the only reason she got away with it was because the cops were so overwhelmed. They should have realized that her entire life has been tied in knots around Frank Castle for the past year or two. They should have found out that she was actually seen in company — on the ferry, on the street, on the deck at the cottage.

 

People assume that the Punisher is a loner. It is quite possibly Karen’s saving grace that nobody is actively looking for an accomplice.

  
It just makes her feel even more guilty.


	3. Plus One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... And this is where it all devolves into shameless smut.  
>  As usual, this is the part I am the most insecure about, trying to strike the balance between conveying ~feelings and becoming mushy. But I hope it is not entirely terrible and you readers can get a kick out of it.

It is late in the evening; the city has grown dark in a threatening way. Karen remembers that Fire Island Pines just felt lonely, but maybe that's because  _ she _ was, because Frank was gone during the night.

 

She is still in her street clothes from the ferry crossing, so she gives up on what would certainly be rather uncomfortable sleep. Instead she drags herself up and cleans the apartment spotless - something to do while her mind goes in circles, mostly worrying about her own sanity. As she puts his used coffee mug in the dishwasher, she also worries about Frank, wonders if he got off the island.

 

When she turns around, as if summoned, he's there again. She’s saved from dropping something by virtue of not holding anything.

“Speak of the devil,” she mutters, which makes him chuckle.

 

“Nah, that would be Red.”

 

Frank too is still in his costume, jeans and henley, with a baseball cap that he takes off politely. He is covered in dirt, more so than when she last saw him tied to a chair, and the bruises from his scuffle with Benson’s guards are plumping up his right cheekbone.

 

It matters none, though, because a second later she finds herself wrapped in his arms. She has no idea who moved, but her face presses into the soft shirt, which smells like wet earth. Her fingers dig into his back and his cup her head and shoulder. It makes her feel safe in a way it probably shouldn’t.

 

Frank pushes at her just enough to see her face, and there’s that look again, the one she couldn’t decipher. But this time she has more than a glance; he lets her study him, until she recognizes it: amazement.

 

“You saved me. Thank you,” he replies to the question that must have been on her face. “Rambo couldn’t have done it better.”

 

Karen feels herself blush at the praise, and at the pride in his voice. “I didn’t have a plan.”

 

He dismisses that with a shrug. “Rambo never really had much of one, either.”

 

She snorts a laugh, but he’s still looking at her like that, down his nose in the hug neither of them has bothered to move away from, and she can’t stand it anymore. “What?”

 

Frank’s eyes flick away, bashful all of a sudden, then he draws a deep breath which she feels under her hands on his chest.

“Permission to kiss you, ma’am?”

 

“Huh.” Karen is so caught off-guard that it takes a second for the implications to fully process, and she is the one to stare wide-eyed. Sure, she never knows whether to envy his self-confidence, his belief in his brand of ‘justice’, despite the rest of the world condemning him for it — or if he really is a sociopath. But she adores the glimpses of the domestic man she saw in between the firefights, humor dry as the desert, or when he respectfully and sarcastically called her on her bullshit. And maybe she even indulged in a fantasy here or there, because she can admit he is hot. But she never thought that he would… not with how his family died.

 

Well. Like he said himself, he is not that man anymore. That Frank Castle, husband and father of two, died with them. But he isn’t  _ just _ the Punisher either; he is a man who apparently desires her. And Karen is coming to terms with the fact that he is a man she wants in return. One she lies for, holds people at gunpoint for. One she wants to protect, despite everything he does.

 

Shifting forward, she presses herself to him. Ears warming, lips tingling in anticipation, she lifts her face and watches his pupils dilate.

“You may,” she replies, and his lips are molded to hers the moment she finishes the words. They are soft, although a couple day’s stubble prickles her skin, and as he moves the kiss burns and soothes in electrifying alternation.

 

It is so sweet that Karen sighs into it, her knees weakening. Frank may have looked like he could eat her, but he’s gentle instead. This is more than physical attraction. It is admiration, and reverence.

 

Her fingers sink into his hair, pulling his head back more because he follows her lead than because she actually managed to grab onto the short strands. They stare at each other through half-lidded eyes, and Karen smiles at him fondly. “Me too.”

 

She gives him only a second to parse the statement, then she drags him down and licks over his lips. That little obscenity, or the words, or maybe their combination have the desired effect: he  _ attacks _ . He pulls her in at the waist, while his mouth pushes against hers and the ferocity of it forces her to bend backwards. It makes her feel weightless yet secure, being at his mercy against gravitation.

 

She moans appreciatively and finally he takes advantage, licking into her mouth, sliding his tongue across the top of hers. The sensation is so erotic that Karen whines and instinctively bucks her hips against Frank’s, ineffective at this angle, and frustratedly squeezes her thighs instead.

 

In answer Frank’s grip shifts, one hand supporting her between the shoulder blades while the other grabs a handful of her ass. Suddenly there is pressure against her core — just a tease, a zing that races up her spine, but it’s unmistakably his erection rolling against her. He releases her mouth for a groan so she lets her head fall back, wriggling to get the most out of the stimulation.

 

Because she likes the tickle, she scratches her short nails lightly at the nape of his neck and over his jaw. With the other hand she maps the breadth of his shoulders, traces the curves of his biceps and tests its firmness.

 

With a heaving exhale, Frank pulls himself under control again. He straightens them both back up, but only so his hands are free to slip underneath her blouse. It amuses Karen a little, that he is so determined to take this slow, and she loves that he does. Every caress is a promise that this will happen again, even if it will get them into a lot of trouble.

 

Although if they’re supposed to do this right, they really should get horizontal. Karen hums as Frank’s fingertips trace up her spine, and presses a chaste kiss to his nose. “We’ll take this only as far as you want to,” she vows, “but I suggest continuing this on the bed.”

 

He smiles, and steals a quick, deep kiss. Foreheads touching, he asks, “Condoms and lube there?”

 

So much for worrying about pushing his boundaries. “Lube yes. Condoms are in the bathroom cabinet.”

 

“Go get ‘em, then,” he says, but doesn’t let her go before he has kissed a trail from her cheek to her ear. “Meet you in the bedroom.”

 

Karen chuckles at the silliness of it, but nods easily. It’s an ensuite so they walk into the bedroom together anyhow, then she turns left into the bathroom and digs up the box of condoms— she surreptitiously checks the expiration date— and grabs a couple of packets.

 

Frank greets her at the door, naked except for a pair of boxer briefs. Karen’s breath hitches; his physique is impressive, but so is the collection of scars. Most are old, almost faded against the rest of his pale skin. He started wearing body armor, so the worst of the new injuries are on his arms and face.

 

Karen reaches out to touch him before she can censor herself, but he just smirks like he meant for her to lose her composure. “Cocky bastard,” she scolds, making him grin even more. Taking that as permission, as an invitation really, she unrepentingly gropes with both hands. Trimmed dark hair rasps against her palms, but the skin across his collarbones is soft and smooth. She gauges his reaction as she skims his nipples. Sadly there is none; he must not be very sensitive here. So it is even more fascinating to her that his abs jump like crazy when her fingers flit over the bumps. Frank squirms and catches her wrists before she can get to the cut of his hip.

She giggles a little in triumph. “Ticklish?”

 

“Careful, ma’am.” He squeezes her wrists lightly in warning. “This is not a war you will be able to win.”

 

The world tilts sharply before Karen can antagonize him further, and she briefly registers his arm hooking underneath her knees in a bridal carry, then she’s airborne. She squeals, she can’t help it. In the next moment she bounces softly on the bed.

 

Frank looks down at her, mock-stern expression rather ridiculous on an all-but-naked man.

“This is an uprising I need to nip in the bud.”

 

She laughs at him, which turns into another squeal as he wrestles her blouse up enough to blow a raspberry on her stomach. “Uncle! Uncle!” She’s laughing so hard she gasps for air, rubbing her belly to get rid of the strange sensation.

 

Frank stretches out next to her, props himself up on an elbow and plays with her hair, while she settles and catches her breath.

 

The rucked-up material of her blouse stretches tightly over her chest, pulling at the buttons. Frank’s eyes fix on it.

 

“Open them,” Karen prompts, and his heated gaze jumps up to hers.

 

He keeps looking at her, intense in a way that makes Karen feel like she cannot hide anything from him. Fortunately, she doesn’t want to. His hand settles on her stomach, glides upwards, wraps around one breast. Excitement rises in her, makes her blush because that’s how her body is wired and her pale skin exposes it all. She lets him see it - her eyelids half shut, her mouth opening on a deep sigh. He hums, obviously enjoying her responses.

 

Then he works the blouse buttons, starting with the ones between her breasts, the ones that pop open from the stretch. Karen notices that Frank is quite dexterous, manipulating the tiny discs through their equally tiny holes one-handed better than she often manages.

 

She rubs her fingers up his forearm, needing the connection. He shifts when he is done, to press a kiss to her breastbone, then to the swell of her boobs. Karen smiles when he looks up at her. That smile quickly vanishes when he puts his open mouth over one bra cup and breathes hot air through the fabric.

 

Frank chuckles, cocky again, and really she cannot let that stand. Formulating a plan, she pushes at his waist, and he rolls on his back obediently. She climbs on top, seated on his thighs, hands pushing against his shoulders to keep them down. And with an insolent little smirk that makes his eyes narrow suspiciously, she leans down to lick a stripe from his navel up to the hollow of his throat.

 

He twitches, full-body. Karen laughs down at him, red hair a curtain around their faces. “Still smug?” she asks, feeling very, very smug herself.

 

“That how it is with you, eh?” Frank retorts, with a soft clap to her buttocks. “No good deed going unpunished.”

 

“No no, I’m all for positive reinforcement.” Case in point, Karen interrupts herself with a kiss, tickling his palate behind the incisors, before sucking on his bottom lip. “But if you’re being a tease,” she growls, “expect payback.”

 

“Copy that.” He sits up, a blur of motion, grabbing the open blouse and pulling it back away from her, trapping her arms behind her for a second until they slip free. He also makes quick work of her bra clasp. The clothes pile on the other half of the mattress, since Frank is too preoccupied sucking one of her nipples into his mouth that he doesn’t even throw them aside.

 

Unlike Frank’s, Karen’s nipples are tender, so the combination of suction, pressure, and wet friction from his lips, teeth, and tongue respectively drive her nuts in a second flat. Her brain just shuts off and her body runs on instinct, pushing closer to the incredible sensation, grabbing onto his head and keeping him exactly there.

 

Her knees inch forwards, until she can grind down against him again. Slacks and underwear conceal nothing. He’s hard and hot, but no rubbing motion of her hips will be enough to bring her off, even when Frank switches breasts and another lightning bolt shoots to her clit. It’s what makes her thrusts stutter, causes her brain to reboot.

 

Karen whimpers — she means to order Frank for  _ more, damnit, more now _ . No words are coming, just noises of complaint. He must get it though, because his fingers wedge between their bodies and undo the fly of her slacks. He pushes inside them, inside her panties, two fingers sliding between her slick folds. She’s so wired by now that she jumps when his fingers graze the sides of her clit.

 

Frank works with what little room he has to move. Circles cause Karen to try and lift away from overstimulation, breath hiccuping, so he squeezes his fingers on the back-and-forth motion instead. She bucks at that, forcing a rhythm that suits her. Her eyes are closed but her mind provides her with an image of what he’s doing to her, of that damned smirk because he knows he’s got her. Their foreheads lean against each other, and he breathes against her cheek.

 

She realizes he’s talking quietly, murmured encouragements. “Yes, like that, just like that,” he says, followed by a sudden  _ circle _ of his fingers that makes her cry out. It is still bordering on too much, but this time it pushes her to desperation.

 

“Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop,” she thinks, or yells, she can’t tell. She’s burning up.

 

“You’re trembling. You’re right there, aren’t you?” Frank replies. Karen feels her hair being pulled lightly, just enough to tilt her head back again. Frank mouths at her throat, teeth grazing over her pulse point. “Go ahead then, take it.”

 

Another circle of his fingers, rolling her clit viciously, and this time Karen is sure she shouts, “Yes!” Everything constricts down to a blinding spot of light, and holds there for an unbearably long beat— she’s afraid it might die like a spark without kindling, but then— another rub and it explodes; her body vibrates on an impossibly high note. Shooting stars travel into her extremities.

 

Karen slumps, panting. She offers no resistance when Frank kisses her possessively, too wrung out and blissful to stake her own claim. Instead she pets him, careful around the bruised cheek.

 

She chuckles. “A+, eleven out of ten. That sure as hell wasn’t teasing.”

 

Frank’s palm is still cupped over her vulva, in no hurry to let go. “I’m a quick study.”

 

*

 

Sprawled out on top of Frank, she stretches the muscles in her legs carefully. It’s a pleasant ache, sharp but quickly fading, in her right. The left takes a bit more coaxing. Karen pushes her thumb into a point at the hip, and the traumatized muscle gives.

 

Frank’s leveling a raised eyebrow at her, so she wiggles out of the slacks and moves up the bed so he can see the round indent.

 

“When did you get shot?” He traces the scar as if he’d like to wipe it off her skin.

 

She touches one of his gunshot wounds, a graze of his shoulder, in return. “About eight months ago. Some guys were diverting old banknotes bound for destruction. They’re all behind bars now.”

 

He nods at that, satisfied that they didn’t get away. Karen has a feeling that he would have hunted them down otherwise.

“Let me know if it bothers you,” he offers.

 

Smiling, she looks over the various wounds that have been inflicted on him. Strangely enough, the Irish’ drill to the top of his foot isn’t the hardest to look at. It healed relatively smoothly. But there’s a stabwound in his side, from a knife which must have had a jagged edge, that is raised and angry.

 

With a handwave that encompasses all of him, all his injuries, she replies, “Same goes for you.”

 

He grabs her around the waist and pulls her on top of him again. “I think this might be worth a little discomfort.”

 

Karen kisses him again, then the purpling cheekbone, the bullet graze on his right shoulder, the cut on his left pectoral, even the ugly cord of scar tissue on his side.

 

“A lot,” he amends, “this is  _ definitely  _ worth a  _ lot _ of discomfort.”

 

She laughs into his hip, and he twitches again. Intrigued, she breathes across the soft skin under his navel, just above the waistband of the boxer briefs. Frank’s breathing goes a little ragged, and the cock under her chin jerks. But this time he doesn’t stop her from keeping at it. So Karen explores, cataloguing the particular spots that have him twist or rocks his hips up.

 

When his briefs have a distinct wet spot, she locks eyes with him, and very deliberately licks the soaked fabric stretching over the head of his cock.

 

Frank groans, loudly, and thumps his head back on the bed. “Oh fuck, you’ll be the death of me.”

 

It makes her snort. “One of these days, I want to see if I can make you come just from this,” she promises, pulls down the briefs a little on one side, and sucks on the thin skin over his hipbone.

 

“Fuck!” His back bows, strong enough to actually lift her with him, dislodging her. Now he’s the one panting like he ran an obstacle course.

 

She already plans to take him apart in the shower the next morning. Or maybe she can’t wait that long and will wake him like that. Either way, she postpones the experiment by a few hours.

 

Instead she tugs at his boxers, and he helpfully lifts his butt up. Karen gets off the foot of the bed to pull his underwear off his ankles, and while she’s up, gets rid of her own as well. She notices him watching her every move, and hesitates.

 

Frank hums appreciatively. “Come ‘ere.”

 

She kneels up on the bed and so does he, meeting her in the middle. He takes control of this kiss, flicking his tongue against hers playfully and retreating anytime she tries to reciprocate. That makes him also the one to end it, leaning down to purposefully smooth his large palms over her. No spot is left untouched: elbows, armpits, ribs, back of her thighs. It creates a low thrum in her, calming and exciting at the same time.

 

Erection unabated since they started this, he is hard against her hip, smearing precome. She marvels at his patience, at his control not to rut against her, especially since she’s already come once and starts to feel the need again with increasing urgency. Karen mouths and nips at the skin in front of her. Her hands grab onto his butt cheeks and knead, which he immediately copies. She wants to let him do this his way, at his pace, but she can’t just lie back and think of England. Not when she can feel the dimples above his ass, and the cords in his neck are straining right in front of her face.

 

He disentangles himself, but kisses each of her palms before he abandons her in his search for the condom packets. He finds them on the floor, where she dropped them in surprise at being picked up and thrown on the bed earlier. He puts them next to her along with the lube from her nightstand. Then he maneuvers himself behind her, her back to his chest.

“That okay?”

 

Karen lets her head fall back against his shoulder. She takes both of his hands, guides one to cup one of her breasts and the other to run through the patch of blond curls between her legs.

“Most definitely okay,” she smiles at his jaw from the awkward sideways angle.

 

He nods. “Slick up my fingers.”

 

Karen spreads lube on them, although she is soaked enough to feel some slickness running down her inner thighs.

 

She is rewarded with the most amazing, almost frictionless push of two fingers into her. It leaves her to feel the stretch of her vaginal muscles alone, and when Frank hooks his fingers, the pressure against her clit from the inside. It has her tingling again in no time at all, all the way to her fingertips.

 

She reaches back to hold onto the back of his head, which is bent over her enough that he can see down the length of her body. His palm is wet by now too, barely-there drag against her labia and clit.

 

“Another,” she begs on a whisper, and clutches onto his hand when it withdraws.

 

It’s just to comply with her wishes, though, and the third of his thick fingers opens her up wider than she is used to. It’s not painful, exactly, not with her arousal and the sheer amount of lube, but it’s been a while. Frank pauses, breathing shallowly against her temple. She is amazed that he could tell she needed a minute, until she realizes that she has her fingernails buried in his forearm.

 

“Sorry, sorry.” Karen is mortified, but Frank just shushes her and gives her a tentative thrust.

 

The width and the tug at her walls is incredible. She grinds her hips back, rubbing up against his cock. He repeats the motion, gradually speeding up, until she gasps, “I’m ready, I’m ready.”

 

Frank laughs at her eagerness, but she’s too turned on to care. He rolls a condom down his length and she lets some cold lube dribble all over it before he can ask for it.

 

She can tell how affected he really is just from the grip at the base of his cock, like he needs to stave off his orgasm. His voice, when he tells her to lean forward a bit, is rough enough to make her shiver. Karen spreads her knees wide and leans, as requested, forward as far as she can without toppling over.

 

His fingers run from one of her shoulders to the other, sweeping her sweat-matted hair to the side. The cool air against her shoulder blades is a relief, but the heat of his hand, which he smoothes down the length of her back, feels even better. He uses it to steady her by providing a counterpressure on her flank; another point of connection while he guides his cock to slide between her folds.

 

With little rocking motions, Frank pushes inside carefully, yet Karen still takes a deep breath and falls forward, catching herself with one hand against the mattress. “Keep going,” she tells the pillow, before she can muster the coordination to twist around enough to ease Frank’s concern. “Keep going,” she repeats with a reassuring wriggle of her ass. “Feels good. You’re just knocking the breath out of me.”

 

He chuckles, murmurs, “Yeah, okay then,” and pumps his hips a little harder.

 

Karen gasps when he is all the way in. Thankfully her body quickly adjusts to being filled again, and she sighs.

 

That’s Frank’s cue to lift her up, until he supports her weight again. She palms his right cheek, mindful of the bruise, while she presses a soft kiss to the left. “Hello there,” she says around a dopey smile. It is comfortable to be wrapped in his arms; she feels sheltered and cherished. Only minute forward twitches of his hips betray his need.

 

Frank looks at her out of the corner of his eyes, and with his typical dry humor, inclines his head a fraction. “Ma’am.”

 

He follows that up by withdrawing from her almost completely, and thrusting back in with one relentless push. 

 

“Oh!” Karen’s eyes slip shut when he repeats the motion over and over. He’s quite possibly trying to distract her from any more inanities, and that mission is definitely a full success. Her hands roam over his arms, alternating with grabbing his ass and pulling them together more forcefully, more frequently. She pants again, “yes” and “more” and a frustrated “Frank” escaping her.

 

He noses at the spot behind her ear, turns his face into her hair. She feels it fly a little with every exhalation. And then she hears it again, soft murmurs she’s not sure she is even supposed to understand.

 

“Mmh. You’re amazing, you know that?” Frank says, but he clearly expects no answer. His tempo is speeding up, to Karen’s delight, and his hands drift up to thumb at her nipples.

 

She gasps and her back bows.

 

“Fucking hero. So courageous, so tough. Karen, warrior princess,” Frank snickers to himself. “Screw Xena.” He breaks off on a moan because she clenches her vaginal muscles. One of his hands moves lower then, playing with her pubic hair, combing fingers through and tugging on it.

 

“How’d you even get in there, eh?” he wonders.

 

Karen only wonders how he manages to still string words together. Her entire world is focusing on his cock, on the pulsing heat it causes to spread in her stomach, and on the hand that’s maddeningly not quite where she wants it.

 

“All dirty but you figured out a way, yeah. Not just smart, no no. Real intelligence.”

 

She’s blushing again, but this time she cannot tell if it is from arousal or his stream of compliments. What’s clear though, is that it’s totally doing it for her. He’s pumping in and out double-time to her already racing heartbeat, angling upwards to hit that spot he found with his fingers.

 

Frank starts nibbling on her shoulder, the words becoming more distorted with their now frantic movements. “And you came for  _ me _ … monster … not to you, hm. Too sympathetic. Always supportive.”

 

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks, not even what Frank thinks of himself. She knows what she sees in him. 

 

She can’t take it anymore. With a sob, she grabs his hand and strokes both their fingers over her clit. A single pass left-to-right is all she needs. “Frank!” she shouts, then her body goes taut. Everything bright and still and loud rushing. Two… three heartbeats. She forgot to breathe, has to gulp in air.

 

He still drives into her at a crazy pace. She’s starting to become oversensitized, but he already loses the rhythm. With one shove he stops, groaning what suspiciously sounds like her name, and “fuck”. She feels victorious.

 

A couple of seconds later he curls forward, arms crushing her to him. He pulls out carefully, and lets them fall sideways, so they can spoon on top of the covers. They lie that way for a time, calming down, cooling off.

 

When Frank disposes of the condom, she turns onto her back to watch him. He returns and snuggles into her immediately, head resting on her shoulder. He massages the spot at the top of her left thigh he saw her dig into.

 

“Hello there,” Karen says again. She is deeply satisfied, sated. And loved, although neither of them have said the words yet. What she knows, though, is that it is different than with Matt. Less glorified, somehow more realistic. This man sees her, and she him. She would trust him with her secrets, because she is certain he would not be shocked, or even surprised. She is not afraid of losing him over them.

 

Frank locks eyes with her. With a crooked smirk, he replies, “Ma’am,” and kisses her passionately.

 


End file.
